Tuesday, April 5, 2011

How Arizona Inspired The Birth Of A Blog

I have to admit, while there are many things in life that I consume heavily, news stories are not one of them.  However, yesterday, I stumbled on an article about Arizona's proposal to tax smokers and the obese on Medicaid.  I didn't pay too much attention to it until I was at work and noticed that one of the newsletters that I was responsible for sending out prominently featured a blog from one of our writers supporting this proposed legislature!  After reading the post, I became hot, red and extremely tense.  In other words I was pissed!  There are so many reasons why this proposal is both unfair and offensive.

The proposal is based on the idea that people should be punished for not taking proper care of their health.  But does this cover ALL people who are unhealthy?  Do they tax those on the other side of the eating disorder spectrum such as anorexics and bulimics?  How about other unhealthy behaviors like drug use or excessive drinking?  There are SO many unhealthy behaviors in today's society that it would be impossible to impose taxes on all of them.  Although if the government wants to try and regulate that I wish them luck.  If you in turn look at this proposal as saying that anyone that puts their health at risk should be taxed then we open a whole new can of worms.  There are people that partake in extreme sports, people with high risk jobs and since we're getting silly here, our very own soldiers...because last time I checked the dangers of war are not good for your body or your mind.

There is another opinion piece I read here that had yet another great point about this proposal.  They talked about how just recently Arizona gave preliminary approval for a law that would make it illegal for any governing body to restrict toy giveaways that promote fast food consumption.  Here is a quote from that article that I particularly enjoyed.

Low-income people eat the most junk food. And the legislature and the Governor in Arizona could not care less. Keep the high-calorie meals coming. There are taxes to be collected. 

 I don't want to go on and on here, even though I probably could, but let's get to how this prompted me to start a blog.  There has been a lot in my life going on recently that has brought my weight and my issues with my weight to the forefront.  These are all topics for later blog posts.  But with all of this being in the front of my mind and with the addition of all this Arizona hoopla, I came to the realization that maybe I had an opportunity to not only share my own experiences, but provide facts and discussions on all topics of weight.  I felt that just sharing my life would not only get boring, but wouldn't provide any hard, scientific evidence of the plight that someone with weight issues faces on a daily basis.  As I mentioned earlier, I don't read the news a lot...if at all.  But with deciding to start this blog, I've dedicated myself to reading up on a subject very close to home.  I've already set myself up on a news aggregater searching for stories with the tags obesity, nutrition,
weight loss, body mass index and body image.  Please feel free to suggest more!

In closing, I hope that I can not only help others with these resources, and maybe change some peoples minds about us fatties, but hopefully I can help myself.  So please, send me your articles, your stories, your tips, your recipes...anything that you want to share!

2 comments:

  1. I commend you for starting this blog and I will be right there with you the whole way through. As a person that struggles with weight issues all the time, I'm looking forward to reading all you have to say about this subject!

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  2. Thank you! Glad to have you along for the ride!

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